A woman hunting with her pet dingo is a central motif in the
collection of Australian Aboriginal art now on display in an old
Taoist temple converted to the Hong Miao Gallery, writes Zhou
Tao.
Hong Miao Gallery was a 400-year-old Taoist temple that had been
deserted for last 40 years. After its latest incarnation, it has
become a temple to contemporary art, and now it's displaying
Australian Aboriginal art celebrating the creation epic.
The exhibition is part of the celebration by the Australian
Consulate General in Shanghai marking 35 years of diplomatic
relations between China and Australia. People-to-people links are
far older.
The exhibition features 88 batik paintings on silk fabric,
mostly by female artists from the remote Australian desert town of
Utopia. The collection is on loan from the Holmes a Court
Collection.
These artworks provide a unique expression of ancient Australian
indigenous culture, which is juxtaposed with the traditional
Chinese wood architecture in the gallery.
"We are delighted to have such a striking collection of
Australian Aboriginal art in Shanghai to mark our long history of
interaction with China," says Australian Consul General Susan
Dietz-Henderson.
"We are celebrating 35 years of formal diplomatic relation in
2007, but in fact our links go back much further. Chinese traders
have been visiting northern Australia, where these paintings are
from, for more than 250 years," she says. "Chinese people have been
migrating to Australia for over 150 years. So this exhibition is a
symbol of our close connections."
Workshops on Australian art for schools and art lovers are
offered in conjunction with the exhibition.
Australian Aboriginal people use paintings to keep alive and
pass on stories from generation to generation. Utopia is an
Aboriginal community in Australia's Northern Territory. The silks
tell stories from the Dreaming theme, the creation epic.
They are about individual and collective bonds with "country"
and the responsibility to maintain the land through ritual,
ceremony and respect for traditional law.
The images express Aboriginal people's knowledge of the
environment and their use of resources. Many of the images are
about hunting and gathering. The motif of a woman hunting with her
pet dingo weaves through the collection, both as the grand theme of
the ancestral women of the Dreaming and as contemporary women, the
artists themselves.
The continuity of Aboriginal culture is strongly felt in this
collection.
There is no academy or school behind this art, apart from a
20-year-old community tradition of batik making that has generated
formal conventions of its own.
Date: through November 22, 10am-6pm
Address: 496 Nanjing Rd E.
Tel: 021-6351-1310
(Shanghai Daily November 16, 2007)
